The 40 greatest Yes songs, as voted by 50,000 Prog readers
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
In 2020 we asked Prog readers to tell us what their favourite Yes songs were. Almost 50,000 of you voted in the poll. We compiled the results into the following top 40 list – which, we think, includes a few surprises, and of course doesn’t include consideration of the band’s 2021 album The Quest or 2023 follow-up Mirror To The Sky.
40. The Remembering (High The Memory)
Jon Anderson wanted "a calm sea of music" for side two of Tales From Topographic Oceans, according to band biographer Tim Morse. But nothing ever turned out so simple with this band. The opening passages are dreamy enough, but soon Steve Howe can’t help but disturb the peace with emotive guitar lines – and even electric sitar; and Chris Squire’s lively bass also offsets their singer’s Hindu-influenced visions and understated vocal musings, to beguiling effect.
39. The Fish
The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) is a showcase for composer Squire. The title came from his nickname – a result of his fondness for taking long baths. It’s built around a groove in 7/8, with Howe picking out the harmonics on guitar as a backdrop. Live, the track was a platform for Squire to stretch out with an extended solo, fine examples of which can be found on Yessongs and Live At Montreux.
38. Homeworld (The Ladder)
The Ladder saw Yes working with producer Bruce Fairbairn, who brought much of the warmth and ambition of their classic 70s albums back to the music, evidenced in the grand scale of Homeworld. “Yes seem to have come round in a beautiful cycle,” says Anderson in Stuart Chambers’ Yes biography. “It’s remarkable that we’re still making music, and it’s viable music, and it’s very adventurous still. It is still, to coin a phrase, progressive.”
37. Shoot High, Aim Low
Four years separated Big Generator from 90125 and the album had a difficult gestation that saw the band switching studios, countries, and producers before it was finished. Shoot High, Aim Low is unmistakably a product of its time with a slick polished production; note the gated reverb on Alan White’s drums, a technique the became ubiquitous thanks to Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight. There’s a live performance on 2005’s The Word Is Live.
36. Mood For A Day
Howe’s one-man contribution to Fragile is a classical gas. If his signature showpiece Clap doffs its cap to his guitar hero Chet Atkins, this three-minute marvel owes more to another early idol, Andrés Segovia. Howe demonstrates some Flamenco-style strumming, and that rangy left hand of his fingers an ornate, baroque melody harking back to Bach. The penultimate song on its parent record, Mood For A Day is a tasty palate cleanser before the final course, Heart Of The Sunrise.
35. Endless Dream
Closing out the undervalued mid-90s album Talk is this three-part 15-minute epic, fruitfully recalling Yes' longer numbers of earlier times (it's effectively the title track). Trevor Rabin, who was producing, wrote the bulk of it, and both Anderson and White have since sung its praises, the former likening it to Awaken. Its shifts between busily robust and calmly chilled are consummately handled, with Squire and White reminding us why they were among rock's most dazzling rhythm sections.
34. Hold On
One of Yes’ less-heralded qualities has always been their versatility, and this is as good a reflection of it as any. Hold On manages to take the emerging AOR, FM-friendly sound of Asia, Journey, Foreigner et al and repurpose it, while also adding a gutsy rock edge echoing the increasingly dominant pop-rock sound of Bon Jovi and their ilk.
Rabin’s tidy guitar licks and way with a winning chorus are never in doubt, but Anderson and Squire’s harmonies and intricate bridge section also stamp this song with an inimitable Yes identity as the band reinvent themselves for a new era.
33. Leave It
After the incredible success of 90125’s first single Owner Of A Lonely Heart, the pressure was on to repeat the trick. Follow-up Leave It didn’t reach the same giddy heights, peaking at No.24 in the US in April ’84 – but it’s still a curious, clever piece.
Squire’s bassline (the kernel of the song) is groovy, Trevors Rabin and Horn contribute to the numerous catchy motifs and lyrics about the ‘pleasures’ of touring, and Squire joins Rabin and Anderson on those huge, Synclavier-enhanced choral harmonies. Horn’s slick production and Godley and Creme’s 18 arty, upside-down MTV videos add to the 80s charm.
32. Love Will Find A Way
The first single released from the Big Generator album, this is as good a slice of progressive pop as you’re likely to find; but, as with its parent album, not one that finds much favour with a certain section of the Yes fanbase.
Written by Rabin with Stevie Nicks in mind (the sort of thing to drive Yes’ more narrow-minded fans to utter distraction), drummer White heard the song, liked it, and pushed it forward for Yes to record. The single made No. 30 on the US Billboard chart, too. The band would never feature so high in a singles chart again.
31. Don't Kill The Whale
That Yes were at each others throats during the recording of Tormato is well documented and goes a long way to explaining why many of the Yes faithful care little for the album. This, the only single release from that LP, is certainly one of the most consistent and coherent on offer.
Largely written by Squire and Anderson, based around an environmental poem the later had penned. Rick Wakeman chimed in with sounds he conjured up on his newly acquired Polymoog, which he thought sounded like the titular animal. The single breached the UK Top 40, reaching No. 36.
30. On The Silent Wings Of Freedom
Tormato was the album that precipitated Yes splitting up two years later. The self-produced recording sessions were difficult and not entirely conducive – White’s drums sound thin despite being forward in the mix. Nonetheless, On The Silent Wings Of Freedom finds the band on vigorous musical form, leaning towards fusion in the density of the playing, with Wakeman and Howe competing for space, and Chris Squire’s lithe, melodic bass lines that suggest the influence of Weather Report and Jaco Pastorius.
29. Onward
The album may have been described as a “tragedy” by Wakeman, and even the eternally positive Anderson told Classic Rock, “We threw tomatoes at ourselves before the audience could.” Prog fan Fish said: “Even I hated Tormato.” But hey, it's not all bad.
Written by Squire with orchestral arrangements by his Fish Out Of Water ally Andrew Pryce Jackman, this gentle ballad was among the bassist’s favourites of all his songs. The Detroit Free Press agreed, calling it the strongest track. A cover by Mark Kozelek featured in Paolo Sorrentino's melancholy 2015 film Youth, starring Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel.
28. It Can Happen
This song, penned by Squire with additional input from Rabin, had its genesis in the initial sessions for the Cinema project, before that mutated into the line-up for 90125. A raga-like, sitar-laced introduction, accompanied by Squire’s bubbling bass and Anderson’s shimmering, ultra-produced vocal, seems to reflect a hippie-ish message repackaged for the MTV era, allied to a shiny new poptimism.
Squire later told Songfacts that the lyrics were “a message of hope, and just making a way through the world looking for the good route – the one that suits you and leads on to better things.” The positive thinking is infectious.
27. Time And A Word
The title track of Yes’ second album honked of the psychedelic era that birthed them. Recorded at Advision, it was written in 1969 by Anderson and David Foster, his old mate from Accrington band The Warriors. Yes’ then-guitarist Peter Banks added some beautiful textures to the song’s anthemic Beatles-y chord progression (recently Anderson has interpolated All You Need Is Love and She Loves You in his solo version).
Tony Cox’s brass/string arrangements on the album may still prove divisive, but they’re part of the vibe of this singalong love-in, which glanced the UK Album Charts at No.45 that August.
26. Parallels
Squire wrote Parallels intending for the song to appear on his Fish Out Of Water album, but as he explained in a 2013 interview: “In the days of vinyl, there was not enough space for on the album – we were limited to 20 minutes per side of the vinyl long player – so when Yes went to Switzerland in 1976 to start recording Going For The One, I put the song forward…”
The track is dominated by Wakeman playing the pipe organ at St Martin's Church in Switzerland, capturing all the natural reverb of the high ceilings.
25. To Be Over
Sure, The Gates Of Delirium is the focus of the Yes album on which Patrick Moraz did such a great job that Rick Wakeman felt left out and returned. Yet the nine-minute closer To Be Over is a lovely Anderson-Howe creation, the stems of which came to Howe (who's inspired here) while boating on the Serpentine lake. Anderson, talking to Stephen Demorest in 1975, described it as “strong in content, but mellow in overall attitude: it's about how you should look after yourself when things go wrong”. Its atmosphere blissfully completes what Melody Maker then called “one of the most satisfying Yes albums,” and one whose reputation only grows.
24. Tempus Fugit
Drama may not have the most prominent place in many Yes fans’ hearts, but this album closer did much to help evolve the post-Anderson Yes identity, as Buggles duo Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes made a surprise entrance to the fold and the vocals of Horn and Squire proved fully capable of filling the gap at centre-stage.
The title is Latin for ‘time flies,’ and it’s hard not to get swept up in its sheer energetic vim and Squire’s bass. As Downes told Songfacts: "Because the pace of the song is so fast, that was all about the title. It's an extremely fast pace. The title almost picked itself.”
Listen to it without judgement being clouded by the dismay of not hearing the voice that had previously embodied this band, Tempus Fugit stands up proudly against the rest of the Yes back catalogue.
23. Machine Messiah
With Anderson and Wakeman having quit, Yes wasted little time in showing they had moved on with Machine Messiah, the song that opens the Drama album with a sludgy heavy metal riff that sounds more like Tony Iommi than Steve Howe. The music doesn’t stay in doom territory for long, moving into a more familiar vein that allows Horn to prove he could inhabit the upper register that Anderson had made such an integral part of Yes’ musical signature.
The instrumental mid-section alternates between measures of six and seven, with an underlying triplet pulse from White, proving that despite the arrival of Horn and Downes from the world of pop, the band still had formidable technical chops. Live versions can be found on In the Present – Live From Lyon, sung by Beno?t David, and Topographic Drama – Live Across America, sung by Jon Davison.
22. Changes
90125 was the album that brought Yes back from the dead – and, against the odds, gave them a string of hit singles, including Changes. New guitarist Rabin brought a contemporary rock edge to their sound that was markedly different to Howe’s classical inflections. Changes was born from one of Rabin’s ideas and it’s easy to hear the influence of The Police’s Andy Summers in the verse riff.
The lyrics sprang from Rabin’s frustrations dealing with record executives while a solo artist. “In a meeting I went to they played Foreigner to me,” Rabin recalls in Tim Morse’s Yesstories, “and they said, 'You've got to start writing stuff more like Foreigner.' I said, 'I'm not going to, but thanks anyway.’ I thought, 'I'm going through all these changes; it's very strange. And consequently I think that's when that song started coming to me. It's kind of a melancholy song.”
21. America
An early live favourite once Howe joined, the studio version first appeared on a 1972 showcase sampler before adorning 1975’s Yesterdays compilation. Paul Simon's original, as debuted on Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends, is a masterclass in evocative understatement. Yes' 10-and-a-half minute version is not. Those who say Yes were bombastically over the top? This is where they have a point.
That conceded, there's a manic genius to the way Yes change time signatures, elongate instrumental flourishes, and shovel in some West Side Story for good measure. Somehow, a four-minute edit made the Billboard Pop Singles Top 50. Influenced more by The Nice and King Crimson than by S&G (of whom Squire and Anderson were genuine fans), America remains one of the most Marmite tracks in Yes' catalogue, and perhaps in the history of progressive rock.
Put it this way, if it took Paul Simon “four days to hitchhike from Saginaw,” this manifestation of Yes would've taken four weeks.
20. Sound Chaser
What Anderson describes in the lyrics as “electric freedom” finds expression in Relayer's truly frenetic, jazz-rock workout. Moraz tells of how, on meeting the band, he was played work in progress from this track. “They blew my mind,” he said. Then he was thrown in the deep end: “Jon asked me to come up with some kind of introduction to the whole thing. So I kind of instant-composed the intro on the spot,” he told Yes biographer Tim Morse.
The Swiss newcomer’s Moog solo later on was also nailed “in one or two takes,” while Telecaster work from Howe is equally mesmerising. He has referred to the track’s “indescribable mixture of Patrick's jazzy keyboards and my weird sort of flamenco electric guitar.” But Alan White – who singled out Relayer as his favourite Yes album – also stretches his drumming abilities to their limits in order to keep up.
19. Turn Of The Century
Few entries in the Yes catalogue compare with Turn Of The Century for sheer musical and lyrical unity. Written by Anderson, Howe and (in a major role) White, it’s an elaboration on the Ovidian/Greek myth of Pygmalion – a sculptor who fell in love with one of his sculptures. Here, an artist’s beloved wife dies, he makes a figure in her likeness and she is seemingly reincarnated.
Howe’s minor-key acoustic intro sets the theme, guitars and voice intertwine, with Wakeman’s piano and Squire’s bass adding ravishing colour and movement to the romantic narrative. With Wakeman replacing the ousted Moraz, the song was recorded at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland (Wakeman would record his Criminal Record there later in ’77).
Howe would revisit this on his 1995 album Tales From Yesterday, with a sublime vocal from Renaissance’s Annie Haslam. One of Yes’ truly transcendent storytelling moments.
18. Ritual (Nous Sommes Du Soleil)
One of the most cosmic things ever recorded in Willesden, Tales From Topographic Oceans is the point where Yes either went high into the stratosphere or up their own back passages – depending on your stance. It's certainly true that in recent years the herd mentality dismissal of the work has seemed less and less valid.
Sides one and four, in particular, are winning fresh admirers for their ambition and charm. Ritual – the 21-and-a-half minute finale – sees the band strive to gather the threads together and bring it all on home with a bang, a vengeance and a sense of transcendence. Howe collates his guitar themes into something approaching a narrative, and the piano notes underscoring the 'nous sommes du soleil' refrain were actually the work of White, while Wakeman was AWOL.
Wakeman has famously said he hates it – but as Anderson once said: “At least we tried.” And then some.
17. The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of Dawn)
ELP might have introduced classical compositions into the progressive rock sphere, but Tales From Topographic Oceans went several steps further. The Revealing Science Of God comprised the entirety of the first side. Artistically, it was a reaction to the success of Roundabout.
“We weren't really that concerned about having a hit record,” Anderson told Songfacts. “I didn't feel we should ever try to make another Roundabout or make another Fragile. That's why within a space of time – three years – the record companies got very upset with us, because we were doing diverse music and Topographic Oceans.”
The main concept was inspired when Anderson read about the guru Paramahansa Yogananda; and after his idea to record in a forest led to naught, he brought bales of hay and flowers to the recording studio.
16. Going For The One
The lyrical theme of the opening title track of the 1977 album – the quest for sporting excellence – seemed surprisingly unproggy. Yet it also symbolised a band in lean, fighting fit shape to meet the growing challenge of the punk revolution. Steve Howe’s broad strokes of Chuck Berry-style boogie and steel guitar twang usher in the track and resurface throughout, signalling a new songwriting style willing and able to embrace direct pop hooks without jettisoning heady experimentation.
But this is no dumbed-down affair. The increasing dominance of dizzying synthesiser and guitar spirals and celestial harmonies turn this into an alternative chamber pop vision that is Yes, but not as you know them.
“We felt marvellously fresh and excited, and the recording had a great feel about it,” Howe said in the liner notes of its 2003 reissue. As a statement of intent, this was a formidable opening salvo.
15. Perpetual Change
With the band line-up in constant flux over the years and their music ever-evolving, this song title is often used as a headline for articles about Yes. The track itself closes the embarrassment of riches that is their third outing The Yes Album, and from the opening stabs of guitar and keys to the triumphant instrumental fade, this Anderson/Squire co-composition left listeners in no doubt they were witnessing a unique new voice in rock music.
Having replaced Banks, Howe engages his full arsenal here: country picking, pedal steel-like swells, Wes Montgomery-style jazzy passages added to tough blues and fusion lines. Online you can find the isolated tracks of Squire and Bruford’s bass and drums – it’s potent stuff. At the 05:45 mark, one odd-metered section drifts to the left speaker while the right grinds out the song’s main theme, and we’re really not in Kansas any more.
Anderson’s opening lines: ‘I see the cold mist in the night/And watch the hills roll out of sight’ were inspired by the Devon countryside where the writing sessions began, and this expands into a meditation on the nature of the universe, infinity and our place in it. This epic album coda pointed toward the musical adventures to come on Fragile and Close To The Edge.
14. Wonderous Stories
Although Yes had released singles, and to some acclaim in the States, the thought of them doing so went very much against the thinking of a large part of their fanbase.
That all changed when they released the three minutes and 45 seconds of Wonderous Stories. The shortest track from Going For The One is a simple acoustic ballad credited solely to Anderson, emboldened by the rest of the band joining in on the music – and, according to Howe, written during the singer’s “Renaissance period,” with the song portraying the simple pleasures of a beautiful day.
The demo, along with Going For The One, were sent to Wakeman following Moraz’s departure, instigating his return when he liked what he heard. Yes made their first ever promotional video for the song (albeit one with them simply performing live). The single reached No. 7 in the UK charts; no mean feat given bands of their ilk were supposedly under fire from the threat of punk rock at the time.
It was another fine example of the fact that, when the mood took them, the progressive legends of the 70s could turn their hand to writing simple but catchy music with aplomb.
13. Owner Of A Lonely Heart
First drafted by Rabin years previously, Yes' unlikely 80s comeback hit – an American No. 1 – was radically reimagined by Horn, who told a Red Bull Music Academy event in 2011: “I was convinced that if we didn't put loads of whizzbangs and gags all over the verse, nobody would listen to it.”
It was the producer who persuaded a reluctant band to record it, and Squire modified the music while Anderson added new lyrics. Its overall impact, however, relies on the blend of Rabin's heavy guitar and the Synclavier. Horn said that White – initially peeved by being displaced by a drum machine – eventually played a part in the programming, and played keyboards.
It remains one of Horn's favourites among his own productions, and hip-hop artists have acknowledged that it pioneered the use of a sample as a breakbeat (yep, we're still talking about Yes!).
Pushing the album to sales of three million in the US alone – by far their biggest – Owner gave Yes what Chris Squire described as “a phase two audience… what we call our 80s audience.”
Horn noted: “When I showed them what was possible, it was fun to watch them run with it.”
12. South Side Of The Sky
Every so often Yes offered up a reminder that they could do heavy just as well as the Led Zeps and Deep Purples out there when the mood took them – and weave those textures into a bigger, more unorthodox tapestry. “This is a song about climbing mountains,” Anderson has said. “It's dangerous, but we all must climb mountains every day.”
The howling wind that punctuates this eight-minute cornerstone of Fragile gives you a clue as to the theme – a failed, ultimately fatal mountaineering mission. But elsewhere there’s also a brilliantly impressionistic quality to the music. The knotty tangles of guitar and the insistent trudge of the tempo set the scene in some style, while there’s also that climbing pitch to the verse sections and a sense of mounting desperation.
But this was also one of the tracks that showcased Wakeman’s skill as a player and (uncredited in this case) composer. His dramatic musical soliloquy, accompanied by Bruford’s hesitant jazz percussion, offers a stark quasi-classical platform for warm harmonies and the lonely contemplations of a dying man – reflecting Anderson’s earlier musings on the 'warmth of the sky/of warmth when you die'.
11. Long Distance Runaround
One of the punchiest tracks from Fragile was sufficiently concise that it was able to serve as the B-side to the edited Roundabout single without the need for any topping and tailing. Despite its economy of length, it’s still packed full of bold ideas. It opens with one of Howe’s trademark classical-flavoured guitar introductions. Then there’s a polyrhythm with Bill Bruford accenting every fifth note against the steady 4/4 pulse of the keys, bass, and guitar to lend the verses an off-kilter lilt.
The lyrics were born out of Anderson’s frustration with religion, growing up in the Christian faith. “It was how religion had seemed to confuse me totally,” he told Songfacts. “It was such a game that seemed to be played, and I was going around in circles looking for the sound of reality, the sound of God.
“That was my interpretation of that song – that I was always confused. I could never understand the things that religion stood for. And that, throughout the years, has always popped its head up in the song I've been working with.”
A concert staple, the song appears on live releases including Yessongs, The Word Is Live, and Songs From Tsongas.
10. Siberian Khatru
A mere bagatelle at just under nine minutes, this symphonic masterpiece occupies the second half of Close To The Edge’s second side. Anderson brought the bones of Siberian Khatru to rehearsals, credited co-writers Howe and Wakeman beefed up the song’s main propulsive riffs and sections, and the entire band embellished the arrangement. Anderson uses the image of Siberia to add scale, exoticism, mystery, while his birds of prey, rivers and blue tails root the song in nature.
As ever, he sells his oblique, spiritual metaphors with the sheer ebullience of his vocal delivery. “The song builds and builds and builds,” he said later. “You’re taking the audience on an epic adventure. People think it can’t get bigger, but it does. A very cool song.”
As a musical ensemble, Yes purr like a Rolls Royce engine here: Squire’s bass is busy, his harmony and counterpoint vocals crucial; Bruford’s drumming deeply detailed throughout; Howe and Wakeman trade licks across the Advision studio floor – dizzying, eclectic guitars countered by big Mellotron chords; twanging electric sitar parried by stunning harpsichord lines. As with the album, the song is the sound of Yes coming into its own as a unit, and the lexicon of progressive rock gaining form.
Bruford left Yes for Crimson that July, his replacement White joining for the world tour that kicked off the same month. The set regularly opened with Siberian Khatru, which became a concert staple over the years and features on numerous live recordings. The Steve Howe Trio recorded a particularly natty version on their 2010 album, Travelling.
9. I've Seen All Good People
The Yes Album – the first to feature Howe – was where the band truly hit their unique stride. Its highlights are numerous, and I've Seen All Good People stands tall as one of their evergreen anthems. At almost seven minutes and two movements long, it opens with Your Move (chess as a metaphor for relationships) then ratchets up into the country-rock riffing of the more radio-friendly All Good People. While the first part was a US Top 40 hit, radio stations soon took to playing the whole thing, so enamoured were they of the later groove.
The a cappella three-part harmony opening features Anderson, Squire and Howe; the climax does complex things with simple chords. Tony Kaye on Hammond organ does what works rather than what shows him off. The highly-influential critic Robert Christgau of Village Voice hailed it as “a great cut” in which Yes’ “arty eclecticism comes together.”
Anderson again pondered the existence of God while dropping in a couple of homages to John Lennon. He shamelessly namechecks Instant Karma – ‘send that instant karma to me’ – and Give Peace A Chance. Recalling the album, he told Classic Rock: “It started a new plane for Yes, where we were completely original, creating our own music. When I’d joined I’d said, ‘Isn’t it time Yes did the whole thing?’ That became one of our key strengths.”
Howe, for his part, called the song “post-psychedelia” and told Prog that Yes had finally “stood out because we were quirky, risky and kind of weird… Which is a very good thing.”
8. The Gates Of Delirium
Tales From Topographic Oceans was a hit – but it divided critics, fans and the band. Wakeman ate his last mid-show curry, to be replaced by Moraz. In the gloomy year of the three-day-week, double-digit inflation and deadly IRA attacks, Yes repaired to Squire’s home studio in Virginia Water, Surrey, and doubled down on the escapist prog/fusion grandeur with Relayer.
Sprawling over the entire first side, near 22-minute behemoth The Gates Of Delirium was a true statement of intent. Inspired by Tolstoy’s War And Peace, the song began life as piano sketches from Anderson, with the band pitching in, including Moraz. “Jon explained a lot of the conceptualisation,” he said later. “He had some of the themes, but nothing was written down.”
With Moraz pitching in, there’s definitely a sense of experimental jazz in parts here. Unshackled from studio time restraints, the band build an ominous sense of conflict, evoke the sturm und drang of a fierce battle, then linger camera-like over its smouldering aftermath. Later released by Atlantic as a single, Soon was the mournful coda to Yes’ longest piece until 2011’s Fly From Here.
It was performed in its entirety on the Relayer Tour in 1974, though Alan White was not relishing the prospect in 2020. “It was one of the toughest pieces the band ever played,” he said. “It demands a hell of a lot of energy and precision. I look back on it and I think, ‘Oh my God, we were really crazy!’”
7. Yours Is No Disgrace
The Yes Album marked the arrival of Howe into the fold; and the band kicked off the record with the galloping charge of Yours Is No Disgrace, a track that begins with a refrain borrowed from the theme to the TV show Bonanza. Despite that pilfered Western bounce, the song shows Yes really pushing themselves compositionally, using a huge dynamic range to build drama into the music.
“The inventiveness of the group, because of its musical potential, started to show,” said Howe in a 2003 interview for the Guitar Heroes DVD series. “We were trying to formulate, as much as we could, our own style.”
His guitar solo even lets him dip into Hendrix territory, using his wah-wah pedal to great effect. It was the longest song Yes had recorded by this point in their career, a testament to their orchestral sensibilities and a signpost to where progressive rock was going next.
The lyrics reference the Las Vegas casino Caesar’s Palace. “I’d just been to Vegas and it was amazing how crazy the place was and how silly we are,” Jon Anderson told Songfacts. “It was something to do with how crazy we can be as a race, to be out there flittering money around and gambling, trying to earn that big payout, when actually that's not what life is truly about. Our life is truly about finding our divine connection with God, if you like. You know, that’s why we live.”
6. Awaken
For many Yes fans, 1977’s Going For The One was the last great creative statement produced by the Yes Mk IV line-up, and its crescendo-packed 15-minute final track is its crowning glory.
Moraz took part in early sessions, later telling author Jon Kirkman: “I had already exchanged some of the ideas for Awaken.” But it’s the returning Wakeman’s baroque piano parts that open the piece with such a flourish; and towards the end, an extraordinary church organ solo offers a riot of instrumental colour within an otherwise beatific, dreamlike piece.
Anderson told Circus Magazine on its release that the lyric had been inspired by Calvin Miller’s book The Singer, which he was reading during recording at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland. “It’s about this Star Song; which is an ageless hymn that’s sung every now and again,” he said.
There’s a distinctly hymnal quality to large swathes of the piece – and Wakeman actually played the organ in a cathedral near Montreux. The band took advantage of unusually high-quality telecommunications in Switzerland to record his part over a landline to the studio. And they make out “phoning it in” is a bad thing.
5. Starship Trooper
Apart from the fact that it’s one of Yes’s first multi-part extended song cycles – which would define progressive rock as a genre – there’s something truly life-affirming about this nine-and-a-half-minute suite from The Yes Album. The robust riff and star-flecked guitar patterns that introduce the song represent such a fine how-d’you-do that it seems more suited to opening the album rather than closing side one.
Although each of the five members brings a fair amount to the party, it’s arguably Squire who delivers the most exceptional contribution. As well as writing the sprightly acoustic folk interlude of Disillusion, he offers sublime harmonies with Anderson, while the distorted bass sounds – employing tremolo – on the final Würm section shows how prepared he was to push the boundaries of his sonic template, and really unsettle the listener.
Among the fans of this record was a young Trevor Horn, who later told Jon Kirkman: “I’d never heard a bass sound like that before. Starship Trooper – I wore the record out.” As for the lyrical themes, Anderson later told Songfacts that the ‘talks by the water’ section was “interconnected with the realisation that the most peaceful place is down by the lake, down by the river, close to water. I think that has something to do with our ancient evolvement as human beings. Whenever I sing that – and I sing that at every show – I’m always thinking about my family, my connection with the royal family; the oneness of being.”
The royal family’s thoughts on Jon Anderson and Yes have sadly gone unrecorded, but let’s hope they would agree with him that “there are billions of people out there that are all connected on the same level.”
4. Roundabout
Fragile helped Yes break out on the international stage, particularly in the US, and its torch-bearing herald was the magnificent Roundabout. The edited single version went into the Billboard Top 20, a chart peak the band wouldn’t surpass until Owner Of A Lonely Heart in 1983.
Howe and Anderson started writing Roundabout whilst on tour in Scotland, sitting in a hotel room. “We seemed to find a lot of time to do that in the 70s,” Howe told Guitar World in 2014. “We had a private plane. We got to places. People sat by the pool. And Jon and I were in this hotel room, kind of going, ‘Well, what have you got that’s a bit like this?’ We used to quiz one another like that. We did those exchanges in our music, and lyrically as well. This was the era of cassettes, and I’ve still got all of them – Jon and me fooling around in hotel rooms.”
The lyrics were inspired by a drive through Scotland on which Anderson was struck by the profusion of roundabouts; but his trippy approach transforms this drab, prosaic subject into something rather marvellous and magical. Wakeman, the newest member of the band, was introduced via the sound of a piano played backwards on a tape machine, before Howe’s baroque guitar paves the way for Squire’s wonderfully chunky bass line.
Roundabout was the song the band performed when Yes were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, with Rush’s Geddy Lee filling in for the late Chris Squire on bass. It remains a vital staple of their live sets, one of progressive rock’s greatest, most recognisable anthems.
3. Heart Of The Sunrise
With his usual unerring precision, Bruford hit the nail on the head in 2019 when he told Rolling Stone: “On reflection, the band hit its real template with Heart Of The Sunrise. That seemed to have it all. That was a shorter version of what was to become Close to the Edge.”
Clocking it at over 11 minutes, Heart Of The Sunrise closed out Fragile and quickly became one of Yes’ most enduring and beloved signature pieces. Those opening salvos – tattoos of bass, guitar and snare in relentless lockstep – hurtle towards you like a juggernaut, harking back to the brain and brawn of King Crimson, or to the fizzing intensity of The Who or Cream in their pomp.
With Howe’s guitar now subdued and shimmering beneath him, Anderson takes the song to the other side of the dynamic spectrum with his lyrics: 'Love comes to you and you follow/Lose one on to the heart of the sunrise.’
“At that time I was exhausted with the city of London,” he recalled in 2009. “I wanted to get out of there and live in the country. We just wrote, and the music became about that.” Call them fey, call them hippie-dippy, but the sentiment is clear – there are actually academic theses exploring Anderson’s lyrics here, with the city as a symbol of man’s alienation from the natural world.
Having replaced the apparently synth-sceptical Tony Kaye, Wakeman makes his nimble presence quickly felt, notably on the noodly back-and-forth of the mid-section. He has recalled going along for an early rehearsal and the band assembling Roundabout and a large part of Sunrise too.
Given the composition’s complexity, it speaks volumes to the band’s technical facility in 1971. A live staple and fan favourite, Heart Of The Sunrise really does have it all.
2. And You And I
Side One is a tough act to follow, but the Close To The Edge album refuses to fall off a cliff. And You And I keeps the momentum and magic flowing, shaping into a ten-minute, four-movement rock opera. Implausibly, an edit, snipped halfway, was a Top 50 single in the US.
A quarter-century later, Joss Whedon – the man behind the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series and the all-conquering The Avengers films – named his production company Mutant Enemy, quoting Anderson’s lyrics from the song. It was also, he said, the name of his typewriter. (Other sly, oblique references to Yes are scattered throughout lifelong fan Whedon’s work).
While the recording sessions at Advision Studios were reportedly stressful, with Bruford driven to distraction, what ultimately emerged was serene. Led by Anderson and Howe, the band created the album commonly perceived as their masterpiece.
And You And I began as a folk theme strummed by Anderson, which blossomed outwards, Howe and Wakeman interacting beautifully. Anderson claimed its working title was The Protest Song. Then again, he told NME in 1972 that he felt it was hymn-like, and was “secure in the knowledge of knowing there is somebody… God, maybe.” In recent years he happily told Prog that “I was in heaven, and that still comes off this record,” adding that despite disputes and debates the band “were all very connected to each other” and “in love with pushing the envelope.”
His explanations are always nicely nebulous; so listeners can still read their own meanings into the piece's four sections: Cord Of Life (“Okay,” announces Howe at the top, pragmatically); the well-paced Eclipse (reminiscent of Sibelius); The Preacher, The Teacher (with Wakeman scorching out a synth solo); and the 40 seconds of Apocalypse (chirpier than the title sounds). To this day, for all his scepticism, Wakeman plays it live.
1. Close To The Edge
“I mean, how hilarious is it that Bill Bruford left after Close To The Edge because he thought it was too commercial? Ha!” Howe told Prog in 2018. “We put the music first. Kept building; kept pushing on to the next story.”
It's also been said that Bruford left because he thought Yes had peaked, and couldn't build anything greater. While fans of other albums will disagree, Close To The Edge is more often than not cited as their musical zenith – with even grumpy old Wakeman calling it their best. “No-one has ever come close to it,” Horn once said.
Of course, the album's altar, its pièce de résistance, is that almost 19-minute title track, which reinvented the notion of a Side One and somehow gave Yes a million-selling Top 5 album on both sides of the Atlantic. Written by Anderson and Howe, who were in something of an imperial phase, its inspirations, said the singer, included The Lord Of The Rings and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 6 and No. 7.
As they worked at Howe’s home in Hampstead, it was the guitarist who came up with a variation of the lyrical refrain, ‘Close to the edge, down by a river’ (he’d previously lived near the Thames in Battersea). Anderson then ran with the words and themes, also motivated by Hermann Hesse's novel of self-discovery, Siddartha (an influence, too, on Nick Drake's River Man). “It's all metaphors,” Anderson told MusicRadar. Its climax seems to sing of not fearing death, no less.
The opening tape loop, of sounds drawn from both nature and keyboards, took two days to record: the loop itself was 40 feet long. Wendy Carlos’ highly experimental Sonic Seasonings, regarded by many as the first New Age album, is another source Anderson has referenced, as well as Mahavishnu Orchestra, with whom Yes had toured.
As for Wakeman's ominous yet uplifting organ solo, he was playing an idea Howe had originally composed for guitar. Both agreed it sounded better when played on the pipe organ at the medieval St-Giles-without-Cripplegate church in London. Awkwardly, Eddy Offord accidentally inserted the wrong take into the mix, binning the agreed best one. Oops.
That said, Offord’s splicing was ingenious for its time. He crafted a successful through-line amid so many (often conflicting) ebullient ideas, patching together a rich, resonant tapestry. And if in the studio there were inevitable debates, ego clashes and fraught moments, the album captures Yes revelling in a shared ambition – to ignore boundaries, to boldly go.
It may seem strange now, but the grandeur and scale of Simon And Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water album was seen as the one to beat. If the American duo had spent 10 weeks recording that, Yes were intent on spending longer on this, as if that was the measure of stature. Their time had come to shine.
“Even if we’d just done that and then stopped,” Howe told Prog, “I think people would still be talking about it today.” It even got good reviews in its own time, albeit with the NME writing: “not just close to the edge, they've gone right over it.” Billboard reckoned Yes weaved “dainty fragments, glimpses of destinies yet to be formed… transcending the medium,” while as recently as 2018, Rolling Stone named it the fifth best prog moment ever.
It doesn’t want to stop dancing on the edge, and each time you hear it you wonder how they can start at such a high pitch and keep on rising without imploding. That's the beauty of it: it never does topple over that edge. It gets up, but not down.
